So I though I was done building scale rigs (I already had 2) until I won this SCX 10.2 in a raffle at the RPP Jamboree. I won against the odds as there were a few folks there who bough literally hundreds of raffle tickets.
I was pretty stoked to win it, it even made me smile which can be hard
I decided I would try to keep this build light weight unlike my other builds.
I took my time building even though I was exited to finish. I did reach out to ask if there were any things to watch out for when building
It seems like the biggest thing that was mentioned was with one of the gears in the tranny and its orientation, there's a pin that locks this gear to the shaft and there are 2 different profiles to each side of this gear and each lines this gear up in a slightly different spot, enough to cause issues.
This is just for the newer tranny which is found in the 10.2 kits only.
I found that this gear meshed better when this pin went into the square end instead of the round one.
You can see that the gear it meshes with has grooves that dont run straight through it, towards the end they flare outwards which I assume is where the grinding will happen when this gear is put in backwards
I built the chassis without documenting it much at all, but it went together easily. One of the biggest differences I noticed was in chassis flex compared to my Ascender and TRX-4 the 10.2 had a ton of flex, not confidence inspiring but I think it will be fine.
Another thing that I didn't care for was the lack of support for the shock mounts which also hold the body mounts. Last night I decided to try to take a page out of the Ascender book and add cross supports.
I rounded up some extra links from my Ascender kit, 4 more M3 screws and some M3 size washers.
It ended up being a 66 mm link up front with 4 little washers (the washers added 2.5 mm) and a 60 mm link in back with maybe 1 mm extra in between where I was unable to cinch them tight as both ends are threaded. I wasn't brave enough to bore out the holes I used to mount these so I threaded the screw into the plastic mount and then into the links which is a great way to strip something, boring it out wont cause any issues though as you still have some threads in the link to utilize. Up front I've mounted the link between the body mounts (up higher) to clear my battery and the thread grab is much less (through the plastic) which allows you to get these tight, basically you need to skip a thread to be able to get these tight.
Note: use the body mount holes you've got as reference for the lengths of these cross supports as its likely to vary based on exactly where you've bored these holes.
The end results are great, much stiffer shock towers and now my body mounts stay put. Mounting the body used to be a lot more tricky as the mounts would wobble around and not stay put.
This must have also helped to stiffen up the chassis a tiny bit too.
I had planned on using the included XJ body but I'm really not a huge fan of it and couldn't decide on paint, though I may offer it up to my cousin who has a thing for XJ's.
I ended up picking the Pro-Line SR5 body with bed. A friend in high school had one in blue and I had some blue paint on hand so its sort of a tribute build.
I cut out the body for some Knight Customs accents, front grill and light lenses and the rear light bucket and lenses. I used the score and snap method which worked great though the rear buckets were a bit larger then the body lines for it so I enlarged it a bit on the sides.
I sanded the area on the grill for the Toyota badge so that I could actually get a sticker to adhere, I cut it out of the grill sticker Pro-Line had provided.
I used the Axial simple LED kit which has 4 white 5mm up front and 2 red 5mm in back. I really like this kit for its small footprint and the fact that the white LEDs are cool in color so more on the yellow side where as most regular white LEDs are on the blue side.
I cut out two of the front lights and spliced in two orange 3 mm LEDs for the blinkers (they dont flash). I also plan on adding 2 more orange lights in the rear as the red LED in back kind of washes out the whole light cluster making the orange area look red.
I made a short little jumper to plug into the receiver, it has a JST plug on the outer end and I've added another JST end on the lighting lead, I much prefer these over using servo plugs as they only plug in one way, no way to get them wrong when wired correct.
I'm always a fan of having a magnet to hold onto my body pins, I mounted it under the little popped up tool box.
I'm using a Crawlmaster Expert 13T motor from Holmes Hobbies which is both an expert and a master, lol. Its got a 13T pinion at the moment, 15T was a bit too high. Also from Holmes I'm running a Torquemaster BR-XL ESC (waterproofed) I love the silent mode option. I've got a Holmes HV500 V1 servo for steering (theres an updated version out now) and a Castle 10 amp BEC to back up the servo
The wiring on this rig may be the tidiest of all my rigs.
I swapped the springs intended for the front to the back and ran the rear up front for a bit. The front ended up too soft even fully pre-loaded so I scrounged up some more extra Ascender parts and found a stiffer dual rate setup that suited the front much more (they were the silver springs). Part of the issue was tire rub, the stiffer spring helped a fair bit in keeping the tires away from the fenders. But in True lifted Toyota form there is still some rub, it's super scale, lol.
Up front (ascender silver springs)
In the back (the front SCX 10.2 springs)
So far I've tried out a set of Hyrax 1.9s the stock BFgoodrich's and some Pro-Line Krawler T/A's and I think its doing best on the T/A's, though the stock tires are decent for being stock.
Today I'm gonna work up some front and rear bumpers in the 80's tube bumper style like these
I look forward to actually getting out of my back yard with this thing and testing it more, so far I've just been on the rocks and its quite capable.
I was able to keep the weight down so far though I've got some heavy bumpers to add yet. It weighs in at 5lb 12oz (with the plastic bumpers and battery)
So far I'm very happy with this rig "thumbsup"
Thanks again RPP :mrgreen:
I was pretty stoked to win it, it even made me smile which can be hard
I decided I would try to keep this build light weight unlike my other builds.
I took my time building even though I was exited to finish. I did reach out to ask if there were any things to watch out for when building
It seems like the biggest thing that was mentioned was with one of the gears in the tranny and its orientation, there's a pin that locks this gear to the shaft and there are 2 different profiles to each side of this gear and each lines this gear up in a slightly different spot, enough to cause issues.
This is just for the newer tranny which is found in the 10.2 kits only.
I found that this gear meshed better when this pin went into the square end instead of the round one.
You can see that the gear it meshes with has grooves that dont run straight through it, towards the end they flare outwards which I assume is where the grinding will happen when this gear is put in backwards
I built the chassis without documenting it much at all, but it went together easily. One of the biggest differences I noticed was in chassis flex compared to my Ascender and TRX-4 the 10.2 had a ton of flex, not confidence inspiring but I think it will be fine.
Another thing that I didn't care for was the lack of support for the shock mounts which also hold the body mounts. Last night I decided to try to take a page out of the Ascender book and add cross supports.
I rounded up some extra links from my Ascender kit, 4 more M3 screws and some M3 size washers.
It ended up being a 66 mm link up front with 4 little washers (the washers added 2.5 mm) and a 60 mm link in back with maybe 1 mm extra in between where I was unable to cinch them tight as both ends are threaded. I wasn't brave enough to bore out the holes I used to mount these so I threaded the screw into the plastic mount and then into the links which is a great way to strip something, boring it out wont cause any issues though as you still have some threads in the link to utilize. Up front I've mounted the link between the body mounts (up higher) to clear my battery and the thread grab is much less (through the plastic) which allows you to get these tight, basically you need to skip a thread to be able to get these tight.
Note: use the body mount holes you've got as reference for the lengths of these cross supports as its likely to vary based on exactly where you've bored these holes.
The end results are great, much stiffer shock towers and now my body mounts stay put. Mounting the body used to be a lot more tricky as the mounts would wobble around and not stay put.
This must have also helped to stiffen up the chassis a tiny bit too.
I had planned on using the included XJ body but I'm really not a huge fan of it and couldn't decide on paint, though I may offer it up to my cousin who has a thing for XJ's.
I ended up picking the Pro-Line SR5 body with bed. A friend in high school had one in blue and I had some blue paint on hand so its sort of a tribute build.
I cut out the body for some Knight Customs accents, front grill and light lenses and the rear light bucket and lenses. I used the score and snap method which worked great though the rear buckets were a bit larger then the body lines for it so I enlarged it a bit on the sides.
I sanded the area on the grill for the Toyota badge so that I could actually get a sticker to adhere, I cut it out of the grill sticker Pro-Line had provided.
I used the Axial simple LED kit which has 4 white 5mm up front and 2 red 5mm in back. I really like this kit for its small footprint and the fact that the white LEDs are cool in color so more on the yellow side where as most regular white LEDs are on the blue side.
I cut out two of the front lights and spliced in two orange 3 mm LEDs for the blinkers (they dont flash). I also plan on adding 2 more orange lights in the rear as the red LED in back kind of washes out the whole light cluster making the orange area look red.
I made a short little jumper to plug into the receiver, it has a JST plug on the outer end and I've added another JST end on the lighting lead, I much prefer these over using servo plugs as they only plug in one way, no way to get them wrong when wired correct.
I'm always a fan of having a magnet to hold onto my body pins, I mounted it under the little popped up tool box.
I'm using a Crawlmaster Expert 13T motor from Holmes Hobbies which is both an expert and a master, lol. Its got a 13T pinion at the moment, 15T was a bit too high. Also from Holmes I'm running a Torquemaster BR-XL ESC (waterproofed) I love the silent mode option. I've got a Holmes HV500 V1 servo for steering (theres an updated version out now) and a Castle 10 amp BEC to back up the servo
The wiring on this rig may be the tidiest of all my rigs.
I swapped the springs intended for the front to the back and ran the rear up front for a bit. The front ended up too soft even fully pre-loaded so I scrounged up some more extra Ascender parts and found a stiffer dual rate setup that suited the front much more (they were the silver springs). Part of the issue was tire rub, the stiffer spring helped a fair bit in keeping the tires away from the fenders. But in True lifted Toyota form there is still some rub, it's super scale, lol.
Up front (ascender silver springs)
In the back (the front SCX 10.2 springs)
So far I've tried out a set of Hyrax 1.9s the stock BFgoodrich's and some Pro-Line Krawler T/A's and I think its doing best on the T/A's, though the stock tires are decent for being stock.
Today I'm gonna work up some front and rear bumpers in the 80's tube bumper style like these
I look forward to actually getting out of my back yard with this thing and testing it more, so far I've just been on the rocks and its quite capable.
I was able to keep the weight down so far though I've got some heavy bumpers to add yet. It weighs in at 5lb 12oz (with the plastic bumpers and battery)
So far I'm very happy with this rig "thumbsup"
Thanks again RPP :mrgreen:
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, it was my grandfathers so I was bummed. I looked for a replacement and found nothing. The part that broke is the cast iron lever arm, I wasn't too sure welding it back on would hold for long. I finally decided on a plan to weld the large bolt near the break since it was steal.
.
